Live in HD? Donizetti’s Anna Bolena from the Met in Pixels, by Michael Miller


A tortured Smeaton (Tamara Mumford) confesses all to Anna Bolena (Anna Netrebko)

Anna Bolena
Gaetano Donizetti
Felice Romani, libretto
Metropolitan Opera House: 10/15/2011
HD Transmission

The audience poured out of the auditorium, through the lobby, and out into the parking lots with such a happy general purring that it seemed villainous to criticize the brave new entertainment Peter Gelb has brought the world. For almost five years now we have been able to watch High Definition video projections of performances at the Metropolitan Opera in movie theaters and auditoriums like the one at the Clark Art Institute, which I had just vacated. HD Live, as it’s called, has become a hit in most places, I hear—certainly in Great Barrington and Williamstown, where I've seen them, mingling with a dense, enthusiastic, mostly mature crowd. It's often harder to get a ticket to one of these projections than it is to get a seat at Met itself.

Read the full review article on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!